Kim Jong Un Set To Meet South Korea President

Picture: North Korean Official News Service.

Kim Jong Un will become the first North Korean leader since 1953 to visit South Korea when he meets President Moon Jae In on Friday.

No North Korean leader has visited South Korea since the war ended and the summit will only be the third time the leaders of the divided Koreas have met in 65 years.

The previous summits were held during a period of rapprochement which was followed by a decade of tense and cold relations. 

However, relationships between the nations started to thaw earlier this year following North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

North Korean athletes even paraded underneath a unified Korea flag alongside Southern athletes, further illustrating an improving of relations.

The North has had long-held tensions between not only South Korea but Japan and the West over their nuclear weapons programme. 

But last weekend, North Korea announced they were stopping their nuclear weapons testing for the time being ahead of meetings with the South and US President Donald Trump.

The summit with President Moon Jae In is expected to focus on that issue. 

Meanwhile, President Trump is set to meet Kim Jong Un by early June.

It's recently been reported by geologists from the University of Science and Technology of China, that a mountain above one of the North's nuclear sites has collapsed as a consequence of their nuclear testing. 

The site is now said to be unstable.

A timeline of summits between the North and South

In 2000, the first inter-Korean summit was held between former North Korean leader, Kim Jong II and the liberal former president of South Korea, Kim Dae Jung.

The meeting lasted three days and it began with Kim Jong II tightly grabbing the hands of Kim Dae Jung at the Pyongyang airport in North Korea.

This summit led to an arrangement between the countries on joint economic projects which later stalled.

They also agreed to resume reunions of families divided between the border.

Kim Dae Jung won the Nobel Peace Prize later that year for his rapprochement policies with the North.

Seven years later in 2007, the countries held their second summit, this time between Kim Jong II and Roh Moo Hyun, Kim Dae Jung's liberal successor.

Mr Roh visited Pyongyang after crossing the demilitarised zone in a symbolic moment that hit the international headlines. 

The two leaders agreed to pursue a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War and they reached a set of cooperation projects.

However, this was halted after Mr Roh's five-year term was ended just months later.

He was replaced by a conservative, who took a harder line over the North's nuclear ambitions. 

Eleven years on since the last Korea summit, President Moon Jae In, a liberal who took office in May last year, and Kim Jong Un will meet in a village at the demilitarised zone.